Digital Rurbanization: decolonizing Fab Labs. The case study of Fab Lab Austral in Puerto Williams, Chile

Abstract

Global digital infrastructures enable rural settlements to link their communities, local and natural resources with digital production capacities, generating digital urbanization processes. This article develops the concept of Digital Rurbanization presenting the coupling process of Fab Lab Austral, the southernmost Fab Lab in the world, with its community, ecosystem and global infrastructures. Producing a decolonized process of distributed design and making of meaningful prototypes with digital fabrication tools and methods, contributing to its sustainable development and autonomy based on technological education for the production of local solutions and social capital.